Free apps that can help you run a small business

The best things in life may be free, but they get better when you pay for them. At least, this is the rationale behind the freemium model, which is taking the mobile and web application world by storm.

There’s no doubt that freemium applications have appeal. These apps, generally available on both mobile and web platforms, use a simple approach: They offer something for free, with the idea you’ll get hooked, and go back for more. The idea is gaining traction quickly, says Raza Zaidi, founder and chief executive of San Francisco market research company Velositor, which specializes in mobile applications research.

“If you look at the various models, it has the highest growth,” he says. “This is going to be the leading model in the future, starting in 2013.”

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The benefits for small businesses are obvious: no initial outlay, and the chance to test software before paying for more functionality. But Ben Dickie, research analyst at London, Ont.-based Info-Tech Research Group, points out another advantage. He says it gives employees a chance to use tools that they are already familiar with.

Consumerization is a big factor in modern computing. Employees use free online software products routinely at home, and often demand to see the same tools in the workplace. “If they are familiar with those products on the consumer side, the cost of bringing it into the company on a paid subscription basis is lower,” Mr Dickie says. There will be less training, and a lower resistance to adopting freemium tools at work.

The change from the free version of software to a paid model often pivots on this switch from basic consumer features to enterprise-readiness. A service provider might let an individual use its product for free, but may charge money to enable different users to collaborate and share data, for example. Other parameters vendors can charge for include capacity (particularly with online storage), or the removal of advertisements.

What tools can small businesses use to help with key tasks, while scaling up functionality without breaking the bank? Here are a selection:

Storage: Dropbox

This online storage system integrates directly with local folders on your computer. The free account starts with 2 GB of online storage, rising to 18 GB as you refer your friends. The paid version stores up to 500 GB. Companies can also use Dropbox for Teams, which allows multiple employees to collaborate, and includes centralized administration capability.

This system allows teams to create multiple workspaces, and organize tasks and priorities by person. It provides activity feeds for every task, and is available in a mobile version. It is free for up to 30 people. After that, you pay. Teams of under 30 can also pay for premium features, including the ability to add private projects for a subset of members.

Desk, formerly known as Assistly, was acquired by Salesforce a year ago. It enables a company to gather all of its incoming customer support queries from multiple channels, including phone, email, and social networks such as Twitter, and deliver them all via a single web or mobile interface. Companies can also define business rules to help automate some responses. The free version supports one full-time user. Additional users can be bought in for $1 per hour, and full-time additional users can be added for $49 a month.

Evernote allows you to upload multiple document types to a central repository, which is then synced across mobile clients, a web application, and desktop programs available for the Mac and PC. The service recognizes text in your images (including handwriting), and is taggable and searchable. The free version offers 60MB of monthly uploads, while the $5 a month ($45 a year) premium version gives you 1GB. Evernote is launching a business version in December with centralized administration, and collaboration between employees.

This invoicing system also has expense, balance sheet, profit and loss and receivables features. The free account allows you to manage three clients. For $19.95, you get support for 25 clients, and can brand your invoices with your own logo. More expensive accounts offer unlimited clients, access by multiple staff, and team-reporting features.

This tool streamlines the recruitment process, providing resumé management, applicant tracking, and career site management capabilities. It collects resumés from email attachments, skims contact information from them, and gathers applications from different sources in one place. It also interacts with search engines and social media to publicize job postings. A free account lets you list a single job. A relatively large leap to $60 a month lets you list three jobs at any one time. The cost and number of concurrent openings increases from there.

Marketing can operate on a freemium model, too. Mailjet lets you organize email campaigns via a web-based service. You can track your campaigns using analytics, send out newsletters, and optimize your mails with built in features such as message content checking. The free account allows you to send 6,000 emails a month, at a limit of 200 a day. From there, costs kick in at $7.49 a month for 30,000 emails, increasing to millions of emails a month. The company claims setup takes three minutes.